Synopsis: Hannah Arendt is a portrait of the genius that shook the world with her discovery of “the banality of evil.” After she attends the Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, Arendt dares to write about the Holocaust in terms no one has ever heard before. Her work instantly provokes a furious scandal, and Arendt stands strong as she is attacked by friends and foes alike. But as the German-Jewish émigré also struggles to suppress her own painful associations with the past, the film exposes her beguiling blend of arrogance and vulnerability — revealing a soul defined and derailed by exile. [Synopsis courtesy of Toronto International Film Festival]

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Margarethe von Trotta thoroughly eschews filmic biographic conventions in her presentation of important intellectual figures, both in her 1986 "Rosa Luxemburg" and in "Hannah Arendt," which opened theatrically last week.

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"Thinking is a lonely business," utters Martin Heidegger to his student and lover Hannah Arendt, and Margarethe von Trotta's biopic of Ms. Arendt certainly hammers the point home. Barbara Sukowa, who portrays the titular thinker/philosopher/theorist, is possessed with an ability to make her frequent...

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If you live in a "limited release" city, then you've got a fine array of moviegoing options for the weekend. Zal Batmanglij's "The East," starring co-writer Brit Marling, Ellen Page and Alexander Skarsgard, is a smart anti-establishment thriller gaining good reviews from critics. Same goes for Sunda...

Thompson on Hollywood
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Margarethe von Trotta’s captivating “Hannah Arendt” is a slice of a biopic; it covers a ferociously controversial two years in the life of the 20th century philosopher who, during that time, would coin the term “the banality of evil.” Through Arendt’s story, the film looks at uneasy manifestations o...

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"Hannah Arendt" looks through a narrow window at the early 1960’s, when the German-born Jewish philosophy professor drew controversial conclusions in her 1963 New Yorker coverage of the Adolf Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Arendt concluded that Eichmann, the runaway former Nazi official whom the Israelis kidnapped in Argentina in 1960, represented the "banality of evil," the bureaucratic willingness to follow the most evil of orders. She also pointed out that Jewish leaders helped organize deportation of Jews for the Nazis. In Margarethe von Trotta’s period drama, filmed in the grey tones of the time, we see A...